God Commands Humanitarianism

Many Christians believe God is only concerned about the state of a person’s soul. This is not true. God commands us to take care of physical needs too.

I discovered this reading the Bible through this past couple of months (I’m following a 90-day schedule). This week I’ve been reading the book of Isaiah, a prophet during the time the people of Israel had some pretty awful kings and their country had been divided.

Chapter 1 pretty much knocked me on my butt. God tells the people, through Isaiah, that being all “church-busy” is sin when we turn our backs on the helpless and defenseless and fail to work for justice. Look for yourself.

“Why this frenzy of sacrifices?”God‘s asking.
“Don’t you think I’ve had my fill of burnt sacrifices,
rams and plump grain-fed calves?
Don’t you think I’ve had my fill
of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats?When you come before me, whoever gave you the idea of acting like this,Running here and there, doing this and that— all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?

No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I’ll not be listening.And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.
Go home and wash up.
Clean up your act.
Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings
so I don’t have to look at them any longer.Say no to wrong. Learn to do good.Work for justice. Help the down-and-out.Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless.

I’ve been thinking and praying about how I can exchange “church-busy” for the kind of action God calls people to in Isaiah. While we are supposed to function as part of the body of Christ, which is the church, and serve one another, clearly this can go much too far. I don’t want God to look the other way and refuse to hear my prayers.

I’m curious — how do you do good and help the helpless within the context of your life and work?

12 Comments

Joy, you opened a can of worms with this one. I love it! When you are fully awake and aware of the work of the Kingdom of God and what Jesus calls us to, you are a threat to the highly religious. Stand strong in this. As you read through the prophets, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos, you will become even more convicted. The message of the prophets is all about incarnate, sacrificial love poured out for the least of these. The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of Justice.

This is a powerful post, Joy, and I think that passage is not just about social justice. It’s about CARING, about loving as God loves.

Have you ever heard the expression that Christians are the only army who shoot their wounded? The defenseless go to church looking for God, looking for a Defender, and they are too often met with people who want to regulate them into what they should be to be spiritual enough or get close to God. We decide who is worth our help, and we choose the most spiritual route of the people across the world, instead of reaching out to those right in our own back yard – to the point that the people in our own back yard don’t even know if it’s okay to ask for help. We are so closed. Sigh.

Exactly. It’s about being God’s hands and feet here in the world. We are The Body — God uses that analogy intentionally.

I think people get stymied by how to help — sometimes it isn’t immediately obvious and sometimes the things we think help end up making things worse. Or we look at someone suffering the consequences of their poor choices and we decide they don’t deserve help — “you made your bed, now lie in it”… but that isn’t what Jesus does. And none of this is valid excuse to throw up our hands and walk away.

Kristin
on June 24, 2011 at 9:48 am

I belive the church more easily helps someone who needs help “through no fault of their own”.

It’s much harder to help someone whose sin is out their and in public. It much harder to help that person whose made really, bad choices.

When we were in a situation where we need help due to our bad choices, the people least likely to help us were those from the church.

In one church, we received nothing but judgement and condemation. But our non believeing friends offered us a night out, a listening ear, childcare, and laughter.

Beautiful post. God commands us to care for others! What a concept! I think that this is one of the biggest issues I take with my local church. I see the big screens, the extravagant technology, the creature comforts that we partake in every Sunday. Then I wonder how many in our own body are unemployed and just struggling to put groceries on the table. I know that our homeless population is growing. I know that we could meet so many more needs. Yet, I hear cliches and excuses, like “they made bad choices and are paying for it” or “If a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat”. This is not pleasing to God.
Thank you for this post. It should be shouted from the pulpit.

I really believe that non-believers have a better understanding of what love is than believers anymore. We muck it up in spiritual terms and define it as “doing,” when what we all really need is a place to just BE, which is what Jesus died to provide us in the first place.

You never respond to my comments anymore. I’m starting to get a complex. 😉

As a pastor, I was excited when we finally got a building where I could have an office. It is a warm, comfortable, creative office. I hate it. I do almost all of my work now in the local coffee shop. I get my work done, but I also get the real work done. I have been meeting people, talking with them, and even praying with them right in the shop. I have become a regular fixture of the place. People think I work there. The coffee shop is a major sponsor of the Pride Alive Festival in Green Bay. It is the largest LGBT festival north of Chicago. Because of my connection with the coffee shop, I now have a booth at the event. We are just going to be out there to meet, love, and pray for people. In terms of the Church, you don’t get people who are more “the least of these” than that community. We are not going to fix them or talk to them about being “ungay”. We are simply going to BE the presence of Jesus to them.

I find that when it happens organically, it is much more powerful. When we do the work of Jesus with the agenda of it being “outreach”, it always feels contrived and awkward. Through many relationships I have built naturally over coffee, the door opened for us to be present to a whole community, traditionally rejected by gatekeeper churches. Being busy doing “church work” is simply a defense mechanism for pastoral leaders and for Christians. Avoid the world, and you aren’t responsible for it.

We even have a “Christian” radio station that has a lot of influence over local believers. They have a 3 hour show every day, proclaiming all the people they don’t like as part of the agenda of the Antichrist. http://standupforthetruth.com/ That is the link to the show. They say that any justice work on the part of the Church is the devil’s trick to send us into a new, humanist global religion. I have found that people aren’t looking for sound doctrine. They are looking to be loved by Jesus. The rest will come. Get them to the Jesus who grabbed YOUR heart in the first place.

I think the answer is in how Jesus helped others because it wasn’t the same for everyone. I started to list a bunch of examples but realized that I don’t want to do that without actually studying it out. Still, I think sometimes pure compassion and help is good, regardless of where the person is at. Other times it’s not immediate giving that will help the person the most.

That said, sometimes I give to beggars, regardless of whether they will use it to get drunk or if they’re lying, etc. I do it just to please Jesus. Sometimes we have to love for the sake of our own heart, to keep it soft.

“Being busy doing “church work” is simply a defense mechanism for pastoral leaders and for Christians. Avoid the world, and you aren’t responsible for it.”

SO TRUE.

And I love love love what you said about things happening organically. “Outreach” always feels fake and contrived, artificial and awkward. It’s like something I can check off a to-do list and then go back to my own little closed-off safe life. I don’t believe God wants us to “go do outreach” and then retreat to our fortresses. I think we are to live outreach. I don’t do it very well, though my kids are teaching me, and I want to learn.

🙂 Sorry Bill — I read every comment, but life has been CRAZY these last two weeks and I haven’t been able to reply to all of them. I’ll share why in a couple of days, but I think you’re going to love it. *mysterious smirk*

LOL, I was actually OK. I wasn’t really getting a complex. I’m not quite that needy… not quite. 🙂 I am intrigued by the mysterious smirk, but I’ll wait.

Anyway, I always teach the people at my church that, if it helps them with their past church baggage, they can think of the very first time we reach out to a particular group of people as “outreach” (though they can never use that term in my presence). After that first contact, however, they had better start thinking of that person or group as part of our family.

Melissa
on June 26, 2011 at 12:38 pm

My life changed when Isaiah 58 became my life chapter. My husband and I made a commitment to “spending ourselves” on the poor, needy and those suffering the worst fate, that of not knowing Jesus. Our lives have not been the same since that day in late 2008 and we would not have it any other way {although I must say I was not prepared for the response we have gotten from many of our Christian friends that just don’t get it}.
On a side note, I love reading your blog. I have to click through from my reader and comment far more than I do for anyone else because I am always nodding my head as I read…I think our hearts are in very similar places.

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